Abbie is a doctoral student in the management department at
Columbia University. She is an organizational scholar who studies the boundaries of appropriate behavior—such as the point at which negotiators are seen as pushing too hard or contexts in which expressions of gratitude seem misplaced. She considers what causes people to cross the line into inappropriateness and why they have, or lack, awareness of having done so. She also examines what shapes the standards that observers apply to others’ behavior and the consequences of perceiving someone else’s behavior as inappropriate.